Does God Exist?

My introduction to God was Methodist Sunday School. We’ve both changed a lot since then, admittedly due to my own capriciousness. As I remember God was ever present, in all things, forgiving yet wrathful, ineffable, loving and wanting me for a sunbeam. And was referred to by the objective male pronoun ‘he’, feminism being invented later. ‘He’ was a graspable concept as was up equals heaven and down equals hell, and as a five year old I didn’t encompass the vagaries of spirituality, I was more into trikes and damming streams. My wrestle with spirituality came later but religion put an end to that. Religious beliefs appeared to be man made constructs only fit for fighting over and definitely not worthy of God, which had lost its male pronoun status by then. God was becoming ineffable. So beliefs in general were the next to go. Why hold any belief if it got in the way of further curiosity? But then there was faith, a far trickier concept. Faith seems to require surrender in order to connect and perhaps be elevated by something beyond one’s understanding. This still appeals but is so open to pilfering by one’s lower instincts as to require much rigorous interrogation. So in sixty odd years I appear to have gone full circle. Now for me God is a highly romanticised name for- wait for it- Reality. Yes I’m back damming streams and riding bikes and finally realising it’s Reality that’s ever present, in all things, forgiving yet wrathful, unknowable, loving and wanting me for a sunbeam. But don’t get me wrong I still wish to know God, this is not reductionist atheistic pragmatism. Learning to know and love Reality is just as long a process as any study of theology, it is not merely opening the curtains in a morning and admiring the view. It is underpinned by a spirit and a panoply of factors and forces we are but dimply aware of. God as Reality is not open to the spurious beliefs of an imagined deity that loves me and not you, that provokes me to cause misery in his name. God as Reality will hold me to account or reward me for each of my actions. So does God exist? Well God as Reality does.

Green Lite.

Lefties, lesbians, layabouts and lay lines loonies: You’ve got to love Sheffield. After a pint, three in Mothermouse’s case, we move on to a Free Radicals gig for the Green Party. The Free Radicals are a decent ten piece soul/funk band fronted by three women singers, one in a chair with crutches, all in dresses even I wouldn’t wear; a Commitments tribute band nearing pension age. But then age is irrelevant in Sheff, it’s more about activity circles. In this case the saxophonist from the Socialist Choir, another from jam sessions, more from 5Rhythms Dance, and another from a drama workshop. As we queued for a vegetable curry this latter lady introduced herself as the new Green Party candidate. We’d decided eating judicious as Mothermouse, being somewhat ahead in general merriment, had insisted on clapping along to the warm up folk singer. Then the dancing. There are two thing people often forget about dancing, one it’s a bodily function and two, it’s meant to be enjoyable. We set about proving the point to a raunchy Latin number while Mrs Green Party opted for a far less impressive barely visible mince. I’m sorry to say in our eyes her political potential took a dive, and when she took her green top off to reveal a blind person’s idea of a lovely dress it fell even further. She was beginning to not even warrant a protest vote. Now I know it may seem facile to judge a person’s political capabilities on dance and dress, even the Conservatives aren’t known for it, but it has a certain cachet with me. It shows a flair for life. I mean who remembers Boris Yelsin for his political prowess? When I Googled his name I got, “Boris Yelsin dance.” He was a lush well up for emulating a piston engine on the dance floor. In ‘Love Actually’ who didn’t experience deep joy at the mere thought of a PM who could do sexy moves? Who doesn’t die a little inside seeing Theresa May in a suit? I mean Putin might be able to wrestle a bear bare chested in a YMCA bar but I bet he can’t do a decent paco doble. No, three things Mrs Green, learn to dance, invest in a better bra and get Mothermouse to take you shopping. 

Fuck Schooling.

Are you between 5 and 16 and being told to go to school? Don’t it will harm your education. It’s full of adults beating each other up over who’s responsible for your learning. When you’re interested in something, anything, you know how much fun it is finding out about it, like TV schedules to skateboarding or texting. You learn like a sponge and it’s fun not work. Don’t and you’ll be a dumb ass nobody and you’re way better than that. But school will make it boring and hard. The teachers will be so stressed out from being beaten up they’ll make you nervous and not really want to be there. They’ll try their best but they’re in an impossible situation and may cry a lot and come out in rashes. Adults currently have a great problem with education. They believe you are an inert piece of plastic they must mould into a complex part on an education production line and like any industrial production line that requires rigorous quality control to ensure a consistent product. Your school will be judged as a factory with its teachers as machine operatives and your learning as machined in like a CNC milling machine. You will not be illuminated simply machined to look like a headlight and you will leave with a life long belief that educating yourself is a boring waste of time. Education will make you believe you are the product of what others make of you, it has forgotten you are a self forming organism that simply needs nutrients to grow into a glorious array of diversity. Whether you’re bright, sensitive, physical or artistic it’s your fun to make the best of your talents, your every day enjoyment to explore and expand on them. Don’t let school kill your curiosity, your flare and zest for life, leave until the educational establishment come to its senses.  

Dead Hand Administrators.

Just returned moist (rain) from a symposium, ‘Reconnecting Art & Science.’ Interesting speakers from both sides of the junction, bone and dementia specialists, care workers and artist. I think the aim was to combine the two to create public interest. I suggest a TV series dramatising the case studies of various murders caused by scientific cover-ups. Anyway at the end a discussion about the fruitless task of trying to prove to government and funders that art in all its forms is beneficial to the health of individuals. They don’t appear to have the hearing for it. It then seemed to me art and science are already reasonably well connected and the faculty in need of reconnection are the administrators. The introductory speaker, as if to prove my point replied, “but we need to budget.” Administrators unlike artists and scientist are the overlookers tasked to keep control. They don’t function with the innate curiosity of artist and scientists, they’re required to create a decision for the future in the present, i.e. they process in a sense retrospectively as the present always comes before the future. They must then have an innate fear that the future when it occurs may hold them to account. One looks to the future for possibilities the other with a certain insecurity. Governments, funders and administrators therefore are hesitant of too much change lest it prove them wrong. Whilst I accept the difficulty of their role if their fear predominates it militates against progress. I suggest this is the reason for their lack of support for the benefits of art to the health of individuals. If the benefits can’t be guaranteed in the present they can’t be formulated as part of the future. This is why I suggest there is a far greater need for administrators to reconnect with the disciplines of art and science. The future will invariably be a strange place; it’s the essence of evolution, and our administrators need to reconnect with the flavour of exploration and curiosity that permeate the arts and sciences and not lead with the dead hand of lagging behind. A good time to re-watch, “24 Hour Party People”. 

Agree then do it anyway.

Michael Sheen’s blistering attack on the duplicity of current politics reaches back to the lion at the heart of Britishness. As the general election approaches every bit as facile and bitchy as Miss World contestants tearing out lumps of blond hair I consider putting a huge X across my voting paper. Strangely I begin to wonder if there’s a paranoia over the value of money. Not the day-to-day variations of currency exchange or petrol prices but the validity of it having any value at all. Consider an AM radio, in its time valuable, now not because nobody’s transmitting AM anymore. Money used to be an exchange of value. In between the selling of a cow money notionally contained its value until the purchase of a sideboard. It was a token of tangible value. With the advent of mass manipulation, thank you Freud, came the mass manipulation of ‘value’. Buy a record player, a cassette player, a CD player then junk them all for an iPod that can store a hundred hours of shit music because that’s also been subject to mass manipulation. So now money is not the notional value of a cow but the notional capacity to manipulate. Wealth is now based on the notional ‘value’ of manipulation. Do anything of tangible value and remain poor, do anything of manipulative value and get rich. No wonder the 90% still working on tangible value are disillusioned. Consider then the fear of a great devaluation in manipulation as a currency. Cries of ‘It must not happen!’ but until it does we will not make sufficient of tangible value. We will attempt to manipulate rather than give good patient care, good child protection, an honourable police force and politicians worth voting for. Till then we’ll have to make do with Michael Sheen the actor. (who only played Tony Blair)

Captains Log- Supplemental.

Spock explained further after a few Star Ship cocktails. “As you know Captain I am a product of Vulcan/Human interbreeding, the two species being sufficiently close to allow that occurrence. During the period of rapid brain expansion resulting from the change to erectus stance and larger social groupings the human brain evolved what you might term a feed back loop where the Vulcan brain did not. You might consider it as a “what if” loop. In simple terms Vulcans continued with a “what is” structure. As the configuration of a ‘what if’ statement creates unbounded inferences based only on what can be internally generated it is both experientially historical and not restricted by the confines of reality. Vulcans find this a wasteful use of the limited cognition available. A case in point Captain: When any member of the crew beams down with us they invariably die from being unable to cope with the different reality.” I explained that that’s what makes us human. “May I then suggest Captain that dying is not a usual sign of success.” Dam it Spock they were willing to die for something they believed in! “My point exactly. As their historical experience to that point was of living they could not conceive that death might occur. A Vulcan would consider tangible life always preferable to an intangible belief. But the human variant has some advantages” Oh thanks Spock. “You have spirit.” Go on. “Well a certain stupidity. Vulcans do not have stupidity. When your ‘what if’ loop combines with reality it produces what you call humour. It appears to make you happy. I believe it is a propensity to be desired.” Thank you Spock. “Yes I will consider that. Possibly when you cease to generate beliefs you could be the better of the two.” You’re funny guy Spock. “You think so Captain?”  

The Man who Made Logical Sexy.

Leonard Nimoy was sent by God. It’s a rare talent that can combine the exceptional with the unexceptional, the simple with the complex, the essential with the throw away. It takes such a talent to make logical sexy. To say he was sent by God merely reminds me we all were. Somehow you can’t be a fan of NimSpock because you know he would be indifferent to it, neither enjoy or condemn it, and somehow when a person is indifferent to one’s requests to play the game of indulgence, self or other, all one has left is to love. I find there is a processing between the senses and the soul we call the self. We use it both on incoming perception and on outgoing reaction. What colours our perception also and likewise colours our reaction to it. It becomes confusing. In this way we retaliate angrily to what appears to give cause to anger not realising the whole issue of anger is the insertion of our processing self. Actually occurrences are always neutral. That’s what NimSpock offered us and strangely enough we loved it. We felt free of human entanglement. Then of course came the buts, ‘but he butted me first’, yet if we harangued NimSpock he would just smile slightly and say, “Interesting reaction.” He would conclude if the initial aggression was not useful then escalating it would be illogical. Like Jesus he would turn the other cheek for a better view and in some chemical way his curiosity would neutralise the ‘processing self’. He would appear stronger, more resilient and sexier than those in the thrall of mere circumstance. When so many lives are thwarted by the machinations of their ruling self it’s worth remembering it can be brought down to size by simply observing, “Interesting reaction.” So thank you Leonard for giving us NimSpock may you rest in peace. I know you will, it’s logical.